“It’s bold,” Alex offered after a few minutes too long. “It’s very colorful, too. Vibrant, some might say.”
“Do you see those sharp lines over there?” I stepped forward and squinted a little more. “Do you think the artist glued rulers to the canvas before she launched balls of paint at it and then just peeled them off again?”
“That’s as good a guess as any.” He stepped closer too. “What’s it supposed to be?”
“Life, apparently.”
He cocked his head so far, his ear almost touched his shoulder. “Okay, I’m not trying to be rude or disrespectful, but how exactly is that supposed to belife?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Something about chaos and beauty. I don’t know, but I was told it’s open to your interpretation.”
“Right,” he said slowly. “So what’s your interpretation?”
“That I paid way too much money for a piece of cloth with some paint on it.”
He let out a quiet laugh, and honestly, it helped ease some of the tension bleeding through my veins. We were reviewing the contract he’d had drafted today and I couldn’t say I’d been looking forward to it, but laughing with him now reminded me that above all, he was still my brother.
I could be honest with him. No matter what, I had a say in the terms of this thing, and even if we wound up having to argue it out, Alex would have my back in the end.
“Why is it in here?” he asked.
“It needed a home, so I gave it one.”
“Was your office too obvious?”
“I didn’t want to look at it that often.”
He glanced back at it, then nodded. “Yeah, that seems like a good point. Are you ready to get started?”
“Yep.”
We both gave the painting one last, skeptical look, then spun at the same time and headed to the table. I pulled out a chair and dropped into it, pulling the marriage contract toward me on the tabletop.
Alex sat across from me, settling in before he spoke. “You’ve been through it?”
“Twice,” I confirmed, flipping to the section I’d been lingering on.
“What do you think?”
I shrugged. “It seems like pretty standard stuff, but there are parts I don’t like here and there.”
“That’s why we’re here. Talk to me.”
I turned to the relevant page and then slid it back across the table toward him, leaning over to tap the clause with my pen. “Why is the acquisition between W&S and the Morris Company set out in so much detail? There’s a separate agreement for it.”
“Yeah, but that’s Adeline’s dowry,” he explained, not even flinching. “Obviously, we’ve got the separate contracts that will allow and entitle us to acquire a third of the company, but it still had to be detailed in this document how the two deals relate to one another. Background and context are important.”
“Are they?” I shook my head, irritation flickering as sharp and quick as a blade in my chest, but as peeved as I was, that didn’t change the fact that to everyone else, that was what this was. A deal. “Change the terminology. We’re not doing it like this. If I marry Adeline, I marry her, not her dowry or whatever the fuck you want to change it to.”
“Alright, we’ll change it, but it’s an accurate term under the circumstances.”
“It’s still unnecessary to refer to her like that,” I said. “Change it.”
Alex held my gaze for a second. “Sure. Yeah. If it’s bugging you, I’ll have them rephrase it. What else?”
I exhaled quietly, dragging a hand over my jaw before flipping a few pages forward and tapping the next section that had been worrying me. “Let’s talk about the financials. You’ve included the standard clause that she gets one million a year for the first five years of marriage.”
“Yep.”
